The Importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Triston Ramos — 2018-05-07

Search Engine Optimization or SEO has been around since the early 90s. SEO has since become more important for businesses, both small and large, who want to be seen by internet users globally and locally. What once began in the 90s has now become a billion dollar industry and in 2016 was recorded to be worth $65 billion. Predictions show that number hitting $72 billion this year and $79 billion by 2020.

The importance of SEO comes down to the massive everyday use of search engines and businesses wanting to be the first thing users see. To have your ads be among the top of those search results takes a great amount of time and strategy given the high number of businesses using popular platforms like Google and Bing.

Ready to Rank High on Search Engines?

Here's what you'll need to begin:

Web Development- give users the best experience with beautiful and responsive web design.

Keyword Optimization - keywords are used by search engines to show relevant content to users.

Search engines are powerful tools and learning their functions is the next big step to growing your presence online. When search engines crawl or collect data from your website, they use that information to help understand what your web pages are about. The search engine then adds the information it has collected to an index or catalog. "When you search using a major search engine you are not actually searching the web, but are searching a slightly outdated index of content which roughly represents the content of the web."

Popular search engines like Google and Bing are constantly changing their algorithms. These algorithms are performed to rank, index, and search for any user-generated spam or plagiarized content. This makes it important to keep up-to-date on all things SEO so no penalties are made out to affect your website's rankings.

Interestingly, two-thirds of the $65 million spent in 2016 on SEO came from small businesses and startups. Small businesses or startups will usually hire a specialist or work with an agency to develop and maintain SEO.

Looking at the trends, it may be safe to say that the SEO industry will continue its growth. With easier access to the internet and further development of smartphones, SEO should always be around for businesses to make use of.